PROPOSITION 8 = FREE SPEECH

Welcome to your new career as a student at the Indiana University School of Education! As you pursue your degree in secondary language education, we will do our best to empower you in your lifelong commitment to sacrificing every second of your free time to saving the souls of youth, coordinating intense sessions of ghetto poetry sharing and group hugs, and of course playing an important role in the social reproduction of elitism and tyranny.

At IU, we emphasize an approach to teaching language arts called “social justice,” an approach we highly respect and will require you to prove your full agreement with in both writing and class interactions before we allow you to sacrifice your entire life toward facilitating learners. First of all, we want to make it clear for all you conservatives and libertarians out there, “social justice” is NOT socialism or any other liberal malarkey! We really respect you guys and value your opinions, seriously! No, “social justice” is about making sure the voices and opinions of everyone is heard fairly and equally. Notice how we model this in our own classrooms here at the IU School of Ed. We love to listen to your poetry, no matter the content:

Notice how we all silently nod our heads and sit there uncomfortably. Group hugs for social justice!

The world is a constantly changing place, we realize this. Centuries of research into this crazy thing called “education” has revealed that, though it might be hard to believe, people from different places have different cultures! And even more amazingly, individual people are all different too! Black people say words like “whazzup,” “ho,” “foschnizzlemapizzleMcwhizzle,” all part of a subculture academia has identified as Gang and Nigger Group Social Tag Association (GANGSTA). Can you believe those are actually real words? With meanings? Not just the savage blubberings of barbarians? It sure took US a while to believe it!

We know that what you learn here at IU will be at times both fascinating and disorienting, and it might even shatter everything you thought you once knew. In fact, if our school does not shatter everything you once knew, then something is not working how it should, and immediate action will need to be taken. To keep us abreast of these developments, you will be expected to SPEAK UP in class! Make it clear to us the personal and spiritual conflicts you endure as you are faced with that greatest of questions: do I have what it takes to sacrifice everything for shitty pay? If you ever feel agitated with what you are forced to face here–well, teaching is not for everyone! We have advisers working 24/7 to tell you that you should drop out!

Just as we will force you to bare your soul everyday at the IU School of Ed, you must similarly bring the personal lives of students into the classroom. We have 542 studies written about urban teachers actually getting black kids to not hate them by having them write journals about their parents going to jail and their brothers being on drugs and their best friends mowing people down with an uzi. It always leads to tears, group hugs, terrible poetry, and completely no effect on their socioeconomic status in life.

You see, this is the beauty of that abstract concept we so enigmatically have labeled “social justice.” You will spend years at IU mulling in tears over the dilemma of teaching grammar, of colonizing students’ cultures and languages and minds with mainstream literary values. Yes, oh yes, you will cry, will you ever cry. And at the end–you will teach grammar anyway, because you have to.

Remember, the most important thing as a teacher is to protect free speech, to inspire “social justice,” to mold children into people not afraid to express their opinions! This is a professional school preparing professionals for a profession.